Consumed by beer

Jan. 24, 2013

The tap room at Mount Carmel Brewing Company opened in March. All beer is available on tap and listed on the large chalk board on the wall. / The Enquirer/ Liz Dufour

Inspired locals

This story is part of The Enquirer's series about people who are working to make this a better place for all of us. They work in the arts, community service, their own businesses. They all believe you can create something exciting and fresh in Cincinnati. Know somebody creating things? Email John Faherty at jfaherty@enquirer.com.

Where do you go for inspiration?

Kathleen Dewey: “In what way? You know what, I am not creative. When I need inspiration, it’s our employees and our children. They keep me going. Keep us going. But I am not creative.”

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They start with a name that’s really a declaration. The “Blonde,” will be “Golden in color, entering with a subtle hop aroma, followed by smooth, refreshing body, ending with a clean, crisp taste.” The “India Pale Ale,” will be “Orange in color, entering with a pine hop aroma, followed by rich, malty body with hints of sweet biscuit leaving with a lasting spicy hop finish.”

The people at Mount Carmel Brewing Co. take their beer seriously. Very seriously.

Beer started as a hobby for Kathleen and Mike Dewey. Mike, 40, a tinkerer and a perfectionist, was making beer using an open fire and a garden hose in the small barn back of their place in Mount Carmel area of Union Township. He was working in construction and she was a real estate agent.

It wasn’t that long ago, but it seems very far away. Now they have four 30-barrel fermenters, five employees and plans to expand. And they quit their jobs.

“It was a leap of faith, but I was sure we could do it,” said Kathleen, 41. “We were both basically in the service industry, but we wanted to make something. It is so liberating to create something. Our something just happened to be beer.”

The Deweys bought their old farmhouse on Mount Carmel Tobasco Road as an investment in 1999 right before their wedding. It was a good-sized property and it was inside I-275, which Kathleen, the Realtor, thought was important.

At first everything was pretty normal. They fixed the house , thought about kids and sometimes drank beer which they bought from the Oldenberg Brewery in Fort Mitchell.

“Mike always joked that that if they ever closed, he would have to start brewing his own beer,” Kathleen said.

Oldenberg closed.

Mike became a barn brewer, and he loved to tweak the temperatures and the ingredients and the equipment to make his beer the best he could. He started getting good at it. “Because he had to,” Kathleen said, rolling her eyes a little, a very little, bit. “He’s just that kind of guy.”

Friends and family liked what he was making.

Mike then moved his little brewing operation from the barn into the storm cellar of the 1924 farmhouse. He also bought his first piece of real equipment, a steam-jacketed brew kettle, with double walls that steam passes through. This allows for precise temperatures and even heating.

The beer went from good to very good. Kathleen said that every time somebody had a glass, they said the same thing: “I would buy this.”

However, nobody could because home brewing is for people who make small amounts and never sell it. But the more people liked the beer, and the more Mike enjoyed making it, the more Kathleen began to think they might be on to something.

“I was still in real estate, and he was still in construction,” she said. “But I thought, let’s just get the permit. Maybe this is something we could do. People like it so much.”

This was also about the time when the economy began to shrivel. Construction work began dry up; sales began to sag.

Mike and Kathleen started looking for equipment around the Midwest. Most came from craft breweries that had faltered. But the Deweys thought they could make beer people would buy, so they installed the equipment in their home. Yes, their home.

Then they went through the paperwork and the inspections and got a permit to make beer commercially in 2005. Still, they were not fully invested. Both still worked their day jobs until the hours became crazy. It was time to be fully in or be done.

“We were sitting at the dining room table, and it was getting crazy, and we looked at each other and I said, ‘We can’t stop,’” Kathleen said. “It was long hours and it was very, very difficult, but it just felt right.”

In 2006, Mike went full-time making beer. He inched up to 100 hours per week. Kathleen quit her job the next year.

She was also having the first of the couple’s two children. “We started our family and we started our business at the same time,” Kathleen said. “Which I would not recommend to anybody.”

Kathleen did marketing and sales. At the time, Mount Carmel Brewery sold nearly all of its beer in growlers – refillable, half-gallon glass bottles. That meant Kathleen would fill a cooler with ice and bottles of beer, and then drive to liquor stores and grocery stores, pour a glass and make her pitch.

“At first people wanted to make sure we would last, that they could depend on us,” Kathleen said. “But the sales were easy once they tasted the beer.”

Eventually they hired their first employee, and that was fine, because he was a good friend. But still, it felt like a lot of responsibility.

Then more people came out, and the house began to feel like a workplace. A workplace of kegs and hops and barley. Business continued to grow, and room by room, the house was consumed by the brewery.

Worse yet, living where they worked meant Mike could always slip into the brewery and brew.

“At one point we realized Mike did not see William (their son) for four days, at least not when William was awake,” Kathleen said.

So they eventually bought a house and moved out, and work could be work, and home could be home. It was better. But they still kept two bedrooms upstairs in the “brewery.”

In 2009, the brewery started bottling, at first by hand. “We could not keep up, we were drowning,” Kathleen said. So they bought a bottler, which made life easier.

They now make five year-round beers, four seasonal beers and a variety of what they they call “snapshot” beers, which depend on the mood of the company. Each bottle has an image of the old barn. A six pack costs $8.99 and business is brisk. Mount Carmel recently opened a tap room, where people can taste and buy the beer. Now Kathleen and Mike are planning their next expansion.

More importantly, both are happy.

“My goal in life was to do something, to make a difference, to make a difference in this city. To make a mark,” Kathleen said. “And Mike always wanted to make something. So we did.”